


Everybody Lives

by nitamar



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Inspired by The Dead Line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 14:56:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1609232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitamar/pseuds/nitamar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory watches the Doctor sleep, and wonders what someone like him could possibly be dreaming of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Lives

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So for no reason at all I decided to listen to _The Dead Line_ again... The aftermath was I cried and sobbed and was drowning in Janto feels and Doctor Who feels in general so I did the only thing I knew...  
> Anyway, here it is.

  
Rory watches as the Doctor sleeps. His eyes are moving rapidly behind his eyelids. He's dreaming. Rory wonders what a man like the Doctor could possibly dream of? They always say when dreaming people look younger, free of worries, but as the Doctor dreams Rory sees him frown. 

He hesitates, and carefully, out of a nurse's instinct, touches the other man's tense forehead with his fingers. His skin is cool to his touch, which after all this time always surprises Rory. It's always the tiny little things that reminds Rory the Doctor is an alien, that a Time Lord means a whole race, like a human, not just what the man he comes to know so well is entitled.

He presses, gently, down on the Doctor's deep furrow, subconsciously trying to sooth it. The Doctor shifts a little in his sleep and makes Rory jump, taking his hand back as if burnt. The last thing he wants to see is the Doctor catching him fussing over him. It will just embarrass them both.

But the Doctor doesn't wake up. Instead his touch seems to have triggered something in his sleep and the time lord begins to dream ever so slightly more restless, like he is in a bounded struggle. It takes Rory a while to realize that his lips are moving too, making a barely audible sound,perhaps no more than a crow in his throat.

But Rory still bends down his head to listen. Another nurse's instinct, perhaps.

At first he thinks it must be Gallifreyan. A language he doesn't understand, and no exist soul in the known universe understands any more, well perhaps except his daughter, and the ship they are currently in. But then he remembers how the TARDIS is psychic. She doesn't just translate things into a language you know, she gets into your mind and changes what you hear in your brainwave into something you understands, doesn't matter if you have this thing in your own language or not. So Rory tries to concentrate once more and listens, clearing his mind to feel the TARDIS vibrate through his mind.

And he hears it. Faint like a distant baby too afraid to cry. He hears the Doctor saying, again and again, "Sorry...I'm so sorry..." 

Rory straightens up and looks at the man in front of him. He looks so old in his sleep, Rory thinks. If people see him like this they'd have no problem at all believing he is over a thousand, maybe three, years old. He hope he himself doesn't look like this when he's asleep. He's as old as the Doctor, or even older, after all.

He doesn't want to wake the Doctor, but seeing the old man like this, vulnerable to all his nightmares, all the lives he'd passed and seen, makes his heart ache. And he has to do something, he needs to do something. He's a nurse, after all...

"There's nothing to be sorry for, Doctor." He says quietly to the time lord he's sitting beside. "Don't you ever say anything like that ever again. Because you know what?" His voice starts to get louder despite himself, and he tries hard to turn it down again, "because you know what? Your sorry means nothing. Sorry doesn't make things better, it doesn't mend the lives you've ruined, it doesn't make things unhappen, it is just a cheap word."

Something,somehow, must be the TARDIS, reassures his mind that it's okay. The Doctor is fast asleep, deep in his dreams, he won't wake him.

"But then guess what, Doctor? I'll give you three guesses. Okay I'll tell you, it doesn't matter."

Rory traces the Doctor's arm gently, and wonders what the colour and structure his blood is like under those veins."It doesn't matter. Remember how I used to...okay I'll say it now...how I used to hate you. But now I understand. After a while with you in the TARDIS, after waiting for Amy, I understand. It's okay. You are doing your best. You can't define life by just right and wrong. Things get in the way, bad things, evil things, and sometimes...most of the times...you just can't save everyone. But now that I know you, Doctor. I know that you always do your best. And you always try to understand. There are times you are scary. Very scary. But you always have a very good reason for that. So never say you are sorry, Doctor." Rory covers the old man's forehead with his hand, and imagines the heat of his own palm warm up the skin beneath. "It doesn't help things. And it's not your fault."

He stays like that fall a while, until he comes to his surroundings, like waking up from a dream himself. He laughs at himself. "What am I even doing." He mutters. "I'd better go - before you wake and see me." He says to the Time Lord but not really looking at him, slightly embarrassed. He pauses at the door. "And one more thing. Do not bring this up in any circumstances. If you did hear what I say, that is. Yeah? Do we get a deal?"

*

Rory is helping the Doctor fixing the TARDIS. He has made him carry a heap of different tools he can't even begin to describe the shape of and stand by the console as a human toolbox..stand. Toolstand.

"You know Rory," The Doctor has been blabbering away about something for the last 10 minutes so he's not really paying attention any more. "Yeah." He replies automatically. The Time Lord pops his head from underneath the console, nail in his mouth. He looks surprisingly solemn with oil on his face and his hair sticking in every direction. "Yes Doctor?" seeing his expression Rory pulls his mind together and says again. "Sometimes, a lot of the times, no matter how hard I try I can't save everyone. And they haunt me. Whenever I close my eyes they haunt me."

Rory stands there, his mouth slightly open, and doesn't know how he is supposed to respond to that. Cold wet starts to creep onto his back as he knows, oh he knows, why the Doctor says that to him. But now? He wants to talk about it now?

"Oh pass the stabilizer, will you? The thing that looks like to huge brass paper clips pinned to each other and then got twisted." Before he has a chance to get back to himself the Doctor's voice comes again, muffled by the vast structure of the console. Rory carefully juggles the things in his arms to look for the thing the Doctor just described.

And being old makes you a good liar, Rory decides as he tries to pass the said instrument to the Doctor while keeping a balance with everything he's holding. They both know that, the Doctor and him. And there are things they don't need to talk through. They just know. And trust the other one will understand.

What Rory wants to tell the Time Lord very much, is that one day while he's wondering around he came to the library and found there, as if waiting to be found by him, a blue notebook so weathered its hinges are all falling apart. He opens it and reads his daughter's handwriting.

And he reads, before he can stop himself and tucking it away before he can read any further and spoil himself, these lines.

"Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives."  
Maybe he will leave this to Melody.


End file.
